Lloyd Lofthouse

Divorces, as you may know, are often expensive and divorcing AT&T was no different. This divorce—so far—has cost us more than $1,000, and it seems that AT&T wants to suck more green from our bank account.

Here’s the latest demand dated April 10, 2014: “Return all equipment listed below, including all cables and remotes associated with these items (unless needed for replacement). Note: If you are disconnecting all of your Wireless Receivers, then you must also return the Wireless Access Point device (connected to your gateway).”

I have no idea what they’re talking about. If AT&T thinks I’m going to crawl under the house to retrieve the cables their people installed for the slower internet speed that was supposed to be faster, I have news for them that will be apparent by the time you finish reading this post.

Back in March, soon after we filed for divorce with AT&T and I broke up with Yahoo, my wife walked the 1.5 miles to the nearest AT&T store to return the “Motorola Enhr NVG589”, and the employee she talked to refused to accept it.

We didn’t want it. They didn’t want it—at least it looked that way—so my wife recycled the device and off it went on trash collection day. After all, an AT&T employee had refused to take the NVG589 back when she attempted to return it. That was in March but in April, the “Return all Equipment” notice arrived.

This divorce started a few weeks ago when my wife paid a few hundred dollars to AT&T to speed up our crawling Internet connection, but after all the work by AT&T employees, the internet speed slowed down instead. In fact, it slowed down a lot and this distressed my wife who conducts a lot of global business on the Internet.

After all, Anchee is an international best-selling author with work translated into more than thirty languages, and media from all over the world calls her at home to interview her. In fact, her last book, “The Cooked Seed”, was named one of the top ten books of the year by Entertainment Weekly and her first book, “Red Azalea”; back in 1992, was named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and won the Carl Sandburg Award.

My wife paid to increase Internet speed to 18 too, and it also slowed down drastically.

Before the divorce with AT&T, and about the same time that I was telling my wife to call AT&T to complain and find out why faster (that also added more numbers to the monthly bill) ended up slower, Yahoo decided to change the design of their home page and force all users to comply. When I called an AT&T employee to complain the morning I discovered this insanity, we both learned that the contract AT&T had with Yahoo allowed Yahoo to change things without warning, which they’ve done before, but never this bad. This time, I was told Yahoo would not let me have my old homepage back.

Yahoo—I was told by the friendly and polite AT&T employee—has a contract with AT&T to supply a home page that comes with news, features, entertainment, etc., and it was through that service that I’d spent years building a home page that included an extensive list of book marks that vanished the day Yahoo decided we all had to go along with their latest design change.

If AT&T charges us for that recycled/trashed Motorola NVG589, it might be time to file a case in small claims court for every cent we’ve paid out since the faster connection ended up slower and that old home page with its book marks went the way of the Dodo. In addition, I’m going to mail a copy of this post that you see here to the CEOs of AT&T and Yahoo! If they are reading this in the future, they may also read it online on my Blog @ Divorcing AT&T and breaking up with Yahoo! http://wp.me/p2mPRS-yh

Because of the divorce with AT&T, we are now married to Astound for the cable Internet connection and Verizon for our wireless phones.  The Astound Internet cable is lightning fast compared to AT&T’s link that felt as if it were plowing step by step through desert sand dunes. What’s really great is that our monthly costs are much lower.

Now I’m wondering why we—or anyone else—would stay with AT&T for so many years forking over several thousand dollars annually for a slower internet connection along with abusive treatment from Yahoo! Hindsight is great. Now I know we should’ve never climbed into bed with these companies in the first place. Is this any way to do business?

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Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine, Vietnam Veteran and English-journalism teacher.

His latest novel is the award winning Running with the Enemy that started life as a memoir and then became a fictional suspense thriller. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.

And the woman he loves and wants to save was trained to hate and kill Americans.

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